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Topic: Does it matter who says MMGW is happening? (Read 7783 times)

Didn't Kerosene and whale oil only fall from public favor when electricity started doing a better job of lighting and powering our homes, cities, and factories at a lower price? The only person afraid of allowing the market to work is the person or persons pushing an unrealistic product doomed to failure at any price.

Whale oil fell from grace because humans nearly hunted the sperm whale to extinction. Kind of like crude oil, once there is no longer an over abundance of a resource, the prices go sky high and an alternative finally looks economical. While Frameshift's wind and solar will never power a car (at least directly), they will become economical at some point in the distant future.

The AC vs DC competition is a good lesson in why we should hold off spending a ton of money implementing an inferior technology. If the world had rushed ahead and implemented Edison's inferior DC system, it would have been a HUGE waste of time and money. Luckily Tesla came along in the nick of time. It is probably better to wait (and hope) for a genius like Tesla this time too IMO.

Hmm,I don't think Edison and Westinghouse needed government subsidies to electrify homes back in the day

no one had to deal with a bunch of regulations either. houses might never have been wired if they'd had that cost on top of it all. remember how they were wired? :-D

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

... All too familiar with knob and tube wiring... Too many people think they are experts at things they really know nothing about...

Not to make too much or little out of your concerns for safe and effective electrical insulation, but knob and tube wiring insulation was invented by the same people to first bring electricity to the masses.

Sounds to me a lot like wind turbine blades slicing bald eagles and whooping cranes in half. What other dangers will they gin up?

From the ESA site:“The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget sensor measures both the amount of solar energy that is reflected back into space and the infrared energy radiated by the Earth system, to better understand climate processes.”

I wonder if we humans will learn anything new from measuring energy inflow vs energy outflow with the MSG, or do we already know it all already?

a little OT, but today i went to see the progress on a home that a friend of mine is building. they are doing all the finish work themselves. to have a new power poll put in, they had to go to PGE...fair enough, and PGE had to send out a planner. the planner had to go back to the office and make a pole plan. when she came back with the plan, she wanted to put the pole right in the back yard! she also wanted all the wiring from the road to the poll changed from copper to whatever they are now using. they also refused to use the old pole that was in perfect shape and insisted that a new one go in. in addition, a company was called out to see about clearing some trees...which the company refused to do. we pay extra on our bill for PGE to contract with them for this kind of tree work.fortunately they were able to appeal the plan, but the cost of having ONE power poll put on their property was 1000s of dollars.

then she took me inside. she wanted to show me the 40 dollar fan switches that code requires if you put a fan in your bathroom. the reason? it has to automatically turn off....to save power...the power you pay for....

every place we looked were stupid things that cost them lots of money...because that's what the county required. almost none of them were safety issues, but were "green" issues.

between the permitting process and the inspecting process, they are many months behind schedule. this has cost them 1000's of dollars more. not one delay has been caused by the contractors. every single one has been caused by the county. and....there's not a dang thing that you can do about it.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

With regards to the electric pole:Keep in mind that the tax payers used to subsidize all those power poles and the costs to the homeowners were artificially low. Are you suggesting we subsidize poles again so consumers don’t have to pay for the real costs? It is costly to dig a deep hole for a pole. It is costly for a big stick of lumber, it is costly for the wiring (even if it is now Aluminum), it is costly to stick a transformer on each pole. Easily 1000’s of dollars worth of materials and labor.

I empathize with the modern costs and permitting. On the other hand, there is so much evidence in older homes that the trades will not follow even common sense rules if not required. How is the next home owner of your friend’s home going to know if the thing was built right without some documentation/permits? How would you like to buy a house and find out the electrical is unsafe, the plumbing is unsafe, the structure is unsafe, and there isn’t a shred of insulation in the walls? If everyone was as competent and as honest as our beeks we wouldn’t’ need all these rules :laugh:

With regards to the electric pole:Keep in mind that the tax payers used to subsidize all those power poles and the costs to the homeowners were artificially low. Are you suggesting we subsidize poles again so consumers don’t have to pay for the real costs? It is costly to dig a deep hole for a pole. It is costly for a big stick of lumber, it is costly for the wiring (even if it is now Aluminum), it is costly to stick a transformer on each pole. Easily 1000’s of dollars worth of materials and labor.

sorry. maybe i wasn't clear. the extra cost was on top of the cost of material. some of which was not needed as the existing material was fine per the lineman who came out to do the work. an how much are we paying so that the county can have a "planner" and can contract with a tree cutting company that then refuses to do the work?

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I empathize with the modern costs and permitting. On the other hand, there is so much evidence in older homes that the trades will not follow even common sense rules if not required. How is the next home owner of your friend’s home going to know if the thing was built right without some documentation/permits? How would you like to buy a house and find out the electrical is unsafe, the plumbing is unsafe, the structure is unsafe, and there isn’t a shred of insulation in the walls? If everyone was as competent and as honest as our beeks we wouldn’t’ need all these rules

BTW...we are in timber country. they have trees on their land that would have done well for the pole. this isn't NYC!

we bought an old farm house that had no insulation and very old wiring. we fixed it up. because the place needed work, we could afford it. if this house were on the market then and the new rules on "energy efficiency" that are coming were attached, the owner would have had to have had 1000s of dollars in work done to sell. that cost would have been added to the house and chances are we could not have afforded it. again...like the cash for clunkers thing, the only people hurt by the helpful rules are the are the people who can least afford to pay for them.

isn't that why we pay to have a house inspected before we buy it?

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

You’ve never watched “holmes on homes” or “holmes inspection” on HGTV?Holmes usually ends up tearing a house down to the studs to fix all the “problems” a home inspector typically misses. I doubt his repair bill is ever less than 100K. So the answer to your question is NO.

Old work in an old home is usually grandfathered in unless you touch it, so no you don’t have to spend tons of money bringing it up to 2012 codes.

I’m going to agree with you that the pendulum of building regulation has probably swung too far in the other direction. The problems the various codes are intended to protect us against are now offset to some extent by overzealous regulation. I still say if everybody did things the right way to begin with, we would not need regulation. Problem is everybody isn’t a beek :(

Since this thread is about global warming, it might be interesting to hear comments about the pros and cons of the building regulations in hurricane zones.

how about instead of a bunch of money sucking regulations that serve to keep public employees employed, we make being able to get insurance based on your house meeting certain codes. that way, people have a choice. if you don't want to upgrade or do top notch stuff to your house, you can't get full coverage on your insurance. don't build to hurricane standards, you don't get your house replaced. same for earthquake, etc.

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You’ve never watched “holmes on homes” or “holmes inspection” on HGTV?Holmes usually ends up tearing a house down to the studs to fix all the “problems” a home inspector typically misses. I doubt his repair bill is ever less than 100K

think he'd have a show if he didn't find all these problems and tear things up?

we pay for inspectors, planners, regulators, legislators, and enforcement. they all have staff, cars, offices, benefits, pensions. what do you suppose all that comes to?

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

You are right that solar input is the "main driver of the whole system" but it is relatively constant. From the data I've seen, CO2 correlates very closely with temperature of the atmosphere. So it seems to be CO2 that is the first order variable. The solar output is not the driver of observed change in temperature.

From the data I've seen, CO2 correlates very closely with temperature of the atmosphere.

look again and look at the evidence for the ice core samples.

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You are right that solar input is the "main driver of the whole system" but it is relatively constant

no, it's not.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

The earths orbit is not a perfect circle around the sun. Now I wonder how are temps are affected if we are at apogee in the Northern hemisphere in the summer compared to if we were at the perigee in Summer. I am sure there is quite a difference in solar exposure.I guess this is proper terminology I was looking for:aphelion and perihelion

... the cost of having ONE power poll put on their property was 1000s of dollars.... to show me the 40 dollar fan switches ...to automatically turn off ...the power you pay for.... almost none of them were safety issues, but were "green" issues....

I suspect all these issues were green issues... Greenback issues that is.

... Regulations in the name of saving the planet have done more harm to our economy, than good. ...To start even a small business today you need tens of thousands of dollars to meet all the regulations before you can stick a shovel into the ground. Land studies, water studies, ADA regulations etc...

Work on Disney Land started in Anaheim California in July of 1954. One year later Disney Land opened were a 160 acre orange grove stood only 12 months earlier.

The recent addition to Disney Land built on the former Disney Land parking lot and called "California Avenue" required 5.5 years to build at a cost of one and a half BILLION dollars. Not all the extra time was consumed by regulations but a large percent was.

I seem to remember a certain widow, I think her name was Jackyline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis marrying a certain Greek Shipping tycoon named Aristotle Onassis. Ari owned a whaling fleet that he subsequently sold to the Japanese before we Westerns baptized ourselves in the organic waters of Green Religion. I also believe that NASA still has a suppply of pure Sperm Whale Oil that is indispensable for the lubrication of delicate moving parts, in the weightless environment of space.

OK, I don’t know what NASA might have in their supply room. Edison prided himself in having a huge assortment of materials to experiment with in his lab. That said, whale oil went the way of the typewriter long before Onassis. It was replaced by kerosene around the time of the civil war. Whale oil was used primarily for illumination before the kerosene lamp was invented.